This invention is directed to moving walkways and, more particularly, to moving walkways having acceleration and deceleration regions.
A wide variety of moving walkways, some with and some without accelerating and decelerating regions, have been proposed. For a variety of reasons, prior art moving walkway proposals have been somewhat unsatisfactory when attempts have been made to implement them. For example, many prior art moving walkways are formed of platforms which move people and/or freight in one direction from an entry region to an exit region. The platforms return from the exit region to the entry region along a path located directly, vertically beneath the path along which the people or freight are moved, whereby the overall structure is relatively thick. Because it is thick, a substantial depression must be created where such a structure is to be installed, or relatively long and high entrance and exit ramps must be provided. Thus, such prior art walkways cannot be readily installed on an existing horizontal surface. In addition, such prior art moving walkways have the disadvantage that less than half of their path of travel is actually utilized to carry people or freight. Rather, over half of their path of travel is utilized to return platforms from the exit region to the entry region, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,712,488, for example.
Moving walkways which overcome some of these disadvantages have also been proposed. However, they have other types of disadvantages. For example, the passenger conveyor or moving walkway proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,583,543, has the disadvantage that it can only accelerate to approximately twice its entry speed, because of the mechanical nature of its platform coupling structure. Assuming that a safe boarding speed is 2.0 mph, this means that such as system can only move passengers at a maximum speed of 4.0 mph.
In addition, many prior art moving walkways are more complicated than desired. Thus, they are subject to frequent mechanical breakdowns. Moreover, many of them are not suitable for use between widely separated exit and entry regions, such as those separated by a quarter of a mile or more.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a new and improved moving walkway.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a new and improved moving walkway having acceleration and deceleration regions.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide a new and improved accelerating and decelerating moving walkway adapted to carry passengers or freight over a substantial portion of a planar path of travel.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a new and improved accelerating and decelerating passenger conveyor that is relatively uncomplicated, and therefore suitable for widespread use over extended distances.